- Hi and welcome back to another Amazon selling video.
My name is Nikki Kirk and today
I'm gonna talk about what everyone
wants to talk about except me, IP complaints.
Today I'm gonna go over what they are,
why I don't worry about them,
how you can identify a brand
that might possibly send an IP complaint,
tools that you can use,
and then what you can do if you ever get one.
So an IP complaint is an intellectual property complaint
from a brand who is telling you,
"Hey, you are not able to use our trademark
and sell our item."
So, they are doing this to protect themselves
from counterfeits, which also might be, you might get
an IP complaint or a counterfeit from Amazon,
they kind of, this covers both of those.
So, it's really the brand protecting themselves.
And the thing is that you are not actually again,
okay first, I'm not an expert, I'm not a legal expert,
I'm not a business expert, none of that,
I'm just telling you what I know and what I do.
So please don't just do something because I do it.
You are running your own Amazon business
so you have to make your own business decisions.
I'm just trying to help you by explain my experience in it,
which is all to say that I am not an expert.
So, it's my understanding
that you're not doing anything wrong
by selling the brands item.
However, because we sell on Amazon,
and we're trying to keep our accounts
from getting deactivated on Amazon,
we have to deal and comply with the IP complaints.
So, well, if you buy that product and you sell it on Amazon,
you're not doing anything wrong,
and I think, I'm pretty sure
there's even a Supreme court case
which says you're not doing anything wrong.
You can buy and sell stuff no matter where you bought it,
you can sell it.
The problem is that we sell on a third party platform,
which is Amazon.
So, that was a lot of stuff.
All to say that legally it's my understanding
we're not doing anything wrong,
but because we saw an Amazon, we have to comply with them.
So, that's why the brands are sending them.
They're saying, you know,
"I don't want you to sell our stuff
because you might be doing counterfeit."
It's really kind of like the ones I've gotten,
cell phone cases, beauty products, all that kind of stuff
where obviously they are really protective of their brand.
So, that's what the IP complaint
is, I'll show you later on in the video
what it looks like when it comes from Amazon.
Why I don't worry about them personally
is because I've gotten four in four years
and I don't have the time or energy
to worry about stuff that happens so rarely.
I have not got one in over a year,
I got two or three like in the first year,
so I dealt with them a lot then, I even got shut down
because I didn't know what I was doing,
but so now I'm explaining to you
is how not to get shut down in this video.
But that's why I don't worry about them myself.
There's things you can do to protect yourself,
which I'll go over in a second,
but I don't worry about them because when they come up,
I deal with them and I handle them,
and it's not been an issue.
It's annoying, sure, some,
a lot of things dealing with Amazon can be annoying,
but it's not something I'm gonna actively
like hinder my everyday business with.
But I understand there's a lot of videos
and people talk about them or people have gotten them,
and I think honestly new sellers get hit
with them more often than experienced sellers.
I don't know why that is, but it does seem to happen
that's a theme I've seen in my groups
says that newer sellers have to get them, but fear not,
they are not very hard to get off your account.
So here's a screenshot of my email
of what it comes from, if it's coming directly from Amazon,
that is when you wanna be concerned about,
if it's coming from a brand,
again, I'm not a business expert
or any kind of legal expert,
but when it comes from a brand through a message
as a customer message on my Amazon account,
I don't even respond to them personally,
because like I said, one we don't owe it to them
to tell them where we got it from, and two it's not coming
from Amazon so it could be anyone.
It could be another seller
wanting you to get off the listing, it could be anything.
And so, since it's not coming from Amazon
and Amazon is who is, I'm working for, right?
It's my accounts with Amazon not with this random brand,
I don't respond personally to the brands.
However, it is your call whether you wanna keep selling it
because the message could be your warning
that they're gonna go through Amazon
and have Amazon contact you, you just never know.
So, what I typically do is I'll price to move the item,
just get rid of whatever stock I have and then move on.
I had one from Cook with Color,
and I didn't have any product left
so I just deleted the product and moved on.
I don't sell them anymore,
but those are just things to know,
if it's coming from the brand,
it's your call what you want to do with it,
if it's coming from Amazon, you have to deal with it.
Now, when you're out scanning
there are things that you can look forward
to identify if this brand is potentially going
to issue you an IP complaint.
Again, these are if you're worried about it,
like I don't necessarily,
I do follow these `cause it takes a second.
If you scan something and it's only the brand
on this listing, there's no other sellers
and it's only the brand, even if it's the brand twice
like one FBM and one FBA listing,
you can take that as your warning
that that is probably an IP complaint.
I would not even bother with that.
Typically those tend to be brands
that are protective of their brand like that,
tend to be electronic brands like GoPro,
high-end brands like North Face,
as well as grocery and beauty.
So like niche grocery, like supplements,
like, you know, they have a very, they're a little company
and they're very specific in what they're selling.
Like the Robert Irvine bars, you know,
like Restaurant Impossible, that guy,
he, I was selling some of his bars from Walmart
and I got a brand warning,
It was not an IP from Amazon,
however I just took the listed down
and returned them to Walmart rather than deal with it.
Beauty products, so like Luseta,
you've probably heard me talk about them
and I try to do it in any video that I see them,
which is all the time, because they're everywhere.
That's the last one I got from Amazon directly,
and that was in 2020 I think it was early 2020.
They hit everyone who lists with an IP complaint.
So, if you've bought them, just go ahead and return it,
don't even send it in.
Literally, it's so bad that I'm like,
I think they know when we're buying it
from Ross or T.J. Maxx.
That's how good they are, that they will get you.
So, just that's one of them that I know about.
But again, it's beauty products,
it's niche grocery products, it's niche premium brands.
So, the first thing you wanna look
for, is if it's only the brand,
if there's more than one or two sellers,
it's kind of, okay.
Obviously if there's like 30 or 40 sellers, 10 sellers,
that's, you're more likely to be fine.
If there is only one or two sellers,
you can look at their review count.
So if it's just launched or if it's like 200 reviews
or less, it's probably a retail arbitrage seller,
meaning that is fine.
However, if they have thousands of reviews,
they are a big seller, they've been doing this a while,
they sell so much stuff that they have that many reviews
`cause if you didn't know, it's kind
of, it's not a lot of reviews you get,
I think I've been selling for years
and I have less than 200 reviews.
So, the more reviews they have, that's more likely
that they possibly have a deal directly with the brand,
and that brand or that seller
could possibly be protective of it.
So if it's just one or two sellers
and it's not the brand on it, look at their stock,
like, is it a lot of reviews?
That means they're a big seller
and you might wanna think about that again.
If you wanna dig deeper
or you really wanna buy that product
and it's just the brand on it,
go ahead and look that brand up on Keepa,
look for other essence or variations of it,
and see, historically has there been lots of offers
or is every listing that they have just the brand on it.
If it's just the brand, that is almost a guarantee
that is not gonna be safe for you to sell it.
If other listings have a lot of other sellers on it,
but that one you just scanned happened
to have only the brand,
well, then that's kind of like okay,
because other listings by that brand
have other sellers on it.
So these are all just things you can use
if you wanna dive in deeper
and you really wanna buy that product.
Here are some brands that are known to me
either I got it or I've seen them in the group
that they come from Amazon IP complaints.
So we've got Luseta Argan Magic
which you'll find at T.J. maxx,
that was one I got pretty early on,
Cook with Color which is kitchen gadgets,
and kitchen pots and pans,
Lily's baking chocolate which you'll probably see
on the holiday shippers at Walmart,
Discovery toys, those have, lots of members
of the BOLO group have gotten IP complaints from them,
Vital Performance, they have Vital Protein
and Vital Performance.
I have sold them no problem,
however other people in the groups
have gotten IP complaints.
So it's really up to you,
but that is a known one to me.
Supergoop is another one that I got from the brands.
Like I mentioned, North Face and GoPro
all issue IP complaints, Mixed Chicks and Josie Maran
which you can find at T.J. Maxx,
those are both IP complaints,
as well as FAO Schwarz toys,
I think it might fall under Discovery
or whoever makes them is the same maker.
Anyways, those are all known to me brands,
but if you want extra tools to help you
and you make your deciding easier,
there are two tools out there that I know of that can help.
So IP Alert is one you might've heard me talk about before.
They have given me a code rigging
at $30 off of your license,
and the link is below for that if you wanna grab it,
but IP Alert is handy
because it'll tell you right on the Amazon screen,
it'll pop up and say, IP Alert, like known IP Alert.
It's a other sellers all feed into this system
to tell us if there is IP alerts with these products.
However, it's not a flawless tool, right?
It's just a tool.
All of these tools are to help you in your business,
but again, you have to ultimately decide
what you wanna buy and sell
and what you wanna do running your own business.
So I'm gonna walk you through how IP Alert works
on the laptop, as well as the phone.
So first up, I'm gonna pull up a Starbucks listing
because I know that it'll pop up for this.
So, as you can see
when you have the IP Alert Chrome extension,
it's now gonna pop up for me IP Alert,
this is a known brand to file IP complaints.
However, I have sold Starbucks for years with no problems.
This happens for a couple of toy brands also
that I sold with no problems.
So, for me this is like a good to know,
I'm not gonna stop selling them
because I know I can sell them without any problems.
Again, I deal with everything as it happens.
I'm not gonna worry about it because I know I've sold them.
So what I've heard is that Starbucks actually IP
for like the cups and tumblers and those kinds of stuff,
however, I've also sold those no problems.
So I don't really know.
I don't sell them on the scale that I sell the coffee,
so that might be it.
But that's just one thing to know,
it's not a flawless system.
So, that's the Starbucks one, right?
So you get this little IP pop-up telling me
there's an alert.
You can also add it on your mobile,
it's not necessarily an app, you just,
when you download the license onto your laptop,
it has a little QR code
where you can now save it to your phone,
and you put in your license
and now you have it on your phone.
And it looks like this.
So it's telling me, Starbucks is known
to have file complaints.
You can look it up by ASIN or look it up by brand.
Now I'm gonna look up a Happy Planner
because, now let's say you're out scanning at Walmart
and you're scanning in the office supplies
because office supplies are not restricted,
and so you scan this Happy Planner
and you're like, awesome it makes money, it makes profit,
I'm gonna buy it, I'm gonna send it.
You wouldn't know
that Happy Planner sends IP complaints, right?
Because you've not done it before.
This is where IP Alert can really come in handy.
So, let's say I scanned this at Walmart
and we're gonna, okay, now I see this, and now I decide,
before I even send my stuff to Amazon,
do I wanna still move forward with this?
Or should I return it to the store?
I'm gonna tell you if you bought Happy Planner,
you should probably just return it to the store
because members of the group are getting complaints.
Some aren't, so it's still that kind of thing,
but now that you know about it,
you have a better decision to make.
I don't sell it personally, I don't even scan it anymore
because I just don't wanna worry about that,
and that's how I deal with it.
So you might even be thinking of,
if you did your checks In-Store,
you know, there's seven FBA offers,
none of them seem to be the brand,
they're all pretty new `cause you can see right here,
one rating, 17 ratings just launched, one rating, 203,
so they're a little bit more of a professional seller,
but still not, they could be like me
and they've been selling for years doing retail arbitrage.
So these are all just different things you wanna look at
to know if there's possibly an IP complaint.
However, even still, if you check that out at the store,
you would say, oh, there's seven offers,
that's more than enough, it's probably fine,
and then you get at home and you see there's an IP alert.
Again, all these tools to help you in your business,
making your decisions.
So then the other thing that I use In-Store now
is Buy Bot Pro, again, it's another app
that you can use to scan, I don't use it all the time,
`cause it's pretty slow In-Store to process everything,
but it also has IP alert on it,
So it'll tell you if it's red, green, or yellow.
And a lot of them actually come up yellow,
and for me I'm like, okay,
well that's a proceed with caution.
So you have to decide if you wanna list it or not.
Happy Planner on Buy Bot Pro comes up yellow.
So below in the description,
I have linked both IP Alert and Buy Bot Pro
if those are tools you want to add to your arsenal.
Again, IP Alert, they gave me a promo code, which is below.
I don't have one for Buy Bot Pro,
but if you wanna try it out, I just linked it for you.
Now, if you get one straight from Amazon,
you wanna deal with it very quickly,
and you wanna send a plan of action.
If you're in any of my groups,
I have the plan of action, also called a POA template
in the announcement section of the groups.
It's the one I use, and the one that many sellers
in the groups have used to have it come off their accounts.
So, how I got my account shut down the first year
was I got this IP complaint or counterfeit,
I think it was counterfeit I can't remember.
And I just took the listing down,
I deleted the listing and moved on,
but I didn't know you had to respond to Amazon.
So when I got another one my account was shut down,
and then it was a super stressful weekend
of dealing with Amazon to get it back.
And this was three years ago.
This was when it was easier to communicate with Amazon.
They've made it much harder now to communicate.
So if your account shut down,
is almost to the point now where you have to hire someone
to help you get it back which is unfortunate,
but you can get it back,
there's members of the community who have gotten it back.
So you just wanna make sure that you are dealing with them
as soon as possible.
Amazon tells you what they wanna hear,
and it's all addressed in the plan of action.
So, usually they'll send you an email with the email
that you need to send to the brand.
And all I send to the brand is, hey, I'm so sorry,
I didn't see that I couldn't sell it,
I understand you're protecting your brand,
I'm a small business, I won't sell it anymore,
I totally understand they weren't counterfeit,
here's the receipts,
but can you please retract that complaint?
I've never had a brand retract the complaint,
I've never had a brand respond to me.
However some people have, but I send to Amazon,
I say, hey, I emailed them here's the proof of receipts
and all that stuff I just send my mash of receipts,
whatever receipt you have, you go ahead and send it.
But you wanna make sure you are addressing to Amazon.
Keep going back and forth with Amazon
until you get it resolved.
And resolved right now looks like an email that says,
thank you so much, It'll come off your account in 180 days.
And that is what you wanna hear,
after that you are done with that, it's off of your account
and you can go ahead and proceed,
you don't have to worry about anything.
That's my understanding anymore,
that's what I got when I did mine,
and that's what other sellers are getting.
So that is your like, everything's good move on,
you are done with that complaint.
Again, if you get one from Amazon specifically,
you have to deal with it.
All right, so that is it, that is the IP and I honestly,
if you asked me about it again,
or you talk about it in the group,
I'll have all the same information to give you.
I don't worry about it personally,
again, I worry about everything as it comes up
because I don't have the time or energy
to worry about stuff that isn't happening.
So that's just my attitude towards it,
if you're worried about it, you and grab the tools,
if you want the tools, you can make those extra decisions,
is it only the brand selling it?
And if you get an IP complaint from Amazon,
do make sure you respond as soon as possible.
Thank you guys so much for watching
I'll see you back here for another Amazon selling video.
(bright upbeat music)